The present invention relates to an information processing system such as workstations or personal computers which prepare, search and store a wide variety of media data including texts, graphics, images and video, or more in particular to the processing of browsing data for handling a scaled-down image of documents, etc.
In the conventional information processing systems such as the workstations and personal computers in which the documents or spreadsheets are prepared, data such as graphs and image data applied from an image scanner are stored in a memory such 9a disk in the form of a file. The operator causes a list of file names and icons to be displayed on the display screen and designates the file name or the icon of the desired information thereby to access a particular field.
In JP-A-1-276347 entitled xe2x80x9cInformation Processing Systemxe2x80x9d, a predetermined page data of a file is extracted and the page data thus extracted is scaled down. The page data for a plurality of files thus scaled down are displayed on the display unit simultaneously. The user can easily search for the desired data by viewing the scaled-down data of the pages.
Also, the thesis entitled xe2x80x9cHow to Handle Large-Scale Document Data in Hypermedia Authoring Toolxe2x80x9d by Kii, et al., pp. 3-345 to 3-348, a Collection of Lectures at the 44th National Convention of the Information Processing Society of Japan discloses a method in which the scaled-down image of each document page is displayed on the screen or the contents of each page are displayed successively in the same region.
Displaying the scaled-down images of each page of a document on the screen or the contents of each page successively in the same region will hereinafter be referred to as the xe2x80x9cbrowsingxe2x80x9d.
In the method for displaying a list of file names or icons on the screen and causing the user to select any one of them, however, file names, names of persons that have prepared them, the date of preparation and symbols representing the program used for preparation are displayed at most. To access data contents, therefore, it is necessary to invoke the application program by which the data has been prepared or which displays the data contents.
Further, JP-A-1-276347 and the xe2x80x9cHypermedia Authoring Toolxe2x80x9d fail to refer to the browsing of the data prepared by the existing application programs. More specifically, the data input or edited by the program offered by the system can be browsed, while the data prepared by other programs cannot. In the latter case, for the program offered by other than the system, the browsing is made possible by generating and managing the browsing data corresponding to the data prepared by the program. To realize this, however, it is necessary to reconstruct the program in such a manner as to generate browsing data or to prepare a data conversion program for generating a browsing data from a program-specific data for each of the programs. Also, preparation of a data conversion program makes it necessary to know the program-specific data format.
Further, the above-mentioned prior art fails to refer to the image quality after scale-down. More specifically, because of a scaled-down image, the lines are reduced in size or thin out, or the text information or graphics information are substantially lost. As a result, although the person who has prepared the data can associate the page contents, the user who simply references cannot substantially obtain the information on the pages. Also, the data quantity is increased due to the image information that is handled, and it takes a considerable time before data is read out of the file and displayed.
The present invention has been developed in view of the above-mentioned prior art, and the primary object thereof is to provide an information processing system, in which the contents of the media data including documents, graphs, spreadsheets and animations prepared by an application program, image data input from an image scanner or the like, video data input from the camera, and composite data prepared by combining such data can be easily referenced without the user invoking an application program for displaying the data contents. Another object of the invention is to provide an information processing system, in which the data used for referencing (browsing data) are prepared independently of the application program, i.e., without changing the application program or knowing the data format specific to the application program. Still another object of the invention is to provide an information processing system, in which the quality of the scaled-down image used for accessing is improved.
To achieve the above-mentioned objects, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information processing system comprising a plurality of application programs, output means such as a display and a printer shared by the application programs, means for generating browsing data from the data output by the application programs to the display or the printer, means for relating the application-specific data to the browsing data, and means for displaying the browsing data on the display.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided an information processing system comprising means for scaling down the media data without being converted to an image data, means for generating the image data (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cthe browsing dataxe2x80x9d) configured in such a manner as to permit the grasping of the contents of the media data, means for relating the browsing data thus generated to the media data, means for searching for the browsing data from media data identifiers, means for scaling up/down the browsing data thus searched for, and means for displaying the browsing data thus scaled up/down. There are 9 plurality of means for scaling up/down the browsing data, which are changeable according to the characteristics of the browsing data.
At the time of data search, a list of browsing data is displayed on the display and the application-specific data corresponding to the browsing data selected by the user are searched for by using the relating means.
At the time of data registration, on the other hand, the browsing data are prepared from the data applied to the display or printer at the same time that the application-specific data are registered, and are managed in relation to the application-specific data.
In the case where the application for preparing media data is different from that for searching for media data, display of the browsing data by the search application suffices for accessing the contents, and it is not necessary to invoke the application for media data preparation simply for accessing the contents.
In the case where the user is caused to select a file storing the media data at the time of executing an application, a list of browsing data is displayed on the screen for selection by the user instead of causing the user to input a file name or select from a list of file names or icons displayed. As a result, the user can select a file after knowing the file contents, thereby facilitating the acquisition of an intended media data. Also, in the case where the media data is so large as to cover a plurality of pages, the pages are successively displayed (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cpage flippingxe2x80x9d) or all the pages are displayed simultaneously in the form of a list on the screen, with the result that the user is able to understand the whole contents of the media data and therefore decide whether a particular file is the one intended for.
Further, in view of the fact that the browsing data are generated from the data output on the printer or the bit-map data displayed on the display screen, the browsing data corresponding to the application-specific data can be generated without modifying the application program at all. As a consequence, the data generated by the application program that has been developed independently of the browsing program can be browsed even when the particular data format is unknown.
Also, in addition to the method for scaling down the browsing data by generating the browsing data, a scaled-down image can be generated by the method described below, in which the media data is scaled down with the same format and the browsing data is prepared from the media data thus scaled down. In the method for producing a scaled-down image by scaling down the browsing data, it may be difficult to grasp the data contents due to the disappearance of line in the case where the original browsing data are texts or graphics. The method for generating browsing data from media data, on the other hand, can produce a high-quality scaled-down image as the information amount is not reduced at the time of scale-down.
Furthermore, different suitable scale-down means are used for the binary images (black-and-white images) including texts and graphics and the full-color images including natural images. According to the present invention, a plurality of scale-down means are provided from which an appropriate means can be selected, thereby achieving a high-quality scaled-down image.